Whatever your current web site empire looks like, Market Research should be THE activity you should be most concerned about running your online business.
Because whatever your conversion strategy is, whatever your product is like… if you don’t know who your customer is and how to reach them, it’s all a bit empty, isn’t it?
Alright, I’m preaching to the choir and all that I’m sure, so let’s cut to the chase.
So what’s the best way to get a FEEL for your market online?
It used to be just subscribing to a lot of RSS feeds in your favorite feedreader, set up a few keyword specific watches or searches, and follow what turns up.
Heck, I still do that lot and it definitely has its place in a marketer’s toolbox.
But what about in this perpetually ADD, real-time obsessed time – what is an information-starved market researcher to do?
Our good West Side Neighbors in Sweden called Twingly have just come out with something of an answer.
Twingly already had its great microblog search, which is useful in itself… but Twingly’s Channels holds a lot more promise.
A Twingly Channel on Cloud Computing, doing its voodoo...
I guess you could say Twingly Channels are to the real-time web what Technorati was to the budding read-write web of 2004/2005 or so (who, by the way, are back in a big way – report to follow soon!)
Sure, you can always do the Twitter Search thing, but that will only give you a snapshot that moves at a speed of 100+ mph.
As a marketer, you need a much more organized approach!
Twingly collates the main stories, the comments and links attached to them, and many other useful things.
If you’d like to set up a new Twingly channel (they’re only available public for now), you need to fill out this very nicely pimped out Google Docs form.
I’m not sure if they’ll routinely approve new channels or estimate mass appeal or what… but it’s worth a shot for sure.
Nobody really knows what kind of voodoo goes on behind the scenes there, but one thing’s for sure – it’s one of the greatest market research tools out there right now.
Go check it out!
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